vendor requesting a personal check
 

We are traveling to Italy in September and we are using a particular tour guide due to three very high recommendations. However, the tour operator has requested payment at the end of the tour by personal check (not credit card). I know using ATM and Credit Cards, dependent on the fees, is the most recommended way to pay. But has anyone written a personal check? Did the bank give you a fair conversion rate?

If you write a check on a US bank in dollars (assuming you are in the US, but I imagine it is the same anywhere), your bank just takes out the dollars. No conversion rate involved on your end. The Italian bank that cashes the check charges the vendor whatever fees they charge.

If this is an American tour operator, who presumably has an American bank, that makes perfect sense. If it's an Italian tour operator, it doesn't make sense because he'd have to pay both a deposit fee to put the check in his bank, plus an exchange fee. At any rate, if you write a personal check, there aren't any conversion rates applicable to you, so it doesn't matter.

Ditto St. C.

It is odd that they are asking for a check. Usually, if they won't take a CC, it is cash only.

((I))

There is an American ex-pat in Venice that operates the same way, and we have even sent him a check in advance in US dollars if we already know what tours we are going to do. The fact that they don't even want a check until the end of the tour is double terrific - you don't pay until you are already satisfied with the service. I agree it is probably an American ex-pat or an American company.

i frequently hear stories that vendors in Europe want a personal check from the tourist instead of credit cards. i assume, without knowing, that the check gets deposited in swiss account of the vendor
Things can get murky-- at the strawmarket in florence, we paid a pushcart seller of leather jackets by credit card for which he used a portable credit card machine to record the sale. some 3 months later the charge appeared on our statement as a sale by a gas station in new jersey.